Pelforth Brune

Available just about everywhere, but here

We are lucky, in America, to have so many of the world’s finest foods available to us. From big chain supermarkets to specialty stores, it seems as if there isn’t much you can’t find. Then you travel and discover so many brands you’ve never seen, foods you’ve never heard of, and combinations unimagined. And every once in a while you fall in love with something you’ve eaten and wonder, “How will I live without this?”

My new love is Pelforth Brune. In France, it is available almost everywhere: every pub, every grocery store. Pelforth Brune isn’t fancy, it’s a large production beer considered working-class. In fact, the slogan for Pelforth Brune for years was “Give a Pelforth Brune to thristy men.”

Pelforth Beer has been brewed in Lille, near the Belgian border, since 1937. Now it is owned and distributed by Heineken.

Toby Cecchini, the author of this NY Times article, explains the love and the history far more eloquently than I can.